Today was so ridiculous that I accidentally got to practice being stoic for the first time. I’ve read about the concept before but never really tried to apply it.

A brief definitely of stoicism might read something like this:

Stoic philosophy asserts that virtue (such as wisdom) is happiness and judgment should be based on behavior, rather than words. That we don’t control and cannot rely on external events, only ourselves and our responses.- DailyStoic.com

Basically, it one of the key tenets of it is the idea that you can’t influence what happens to you but you can influence your reactions to it. In doing so, you’re able to weather anything that is thrown at you.

So I spent the day being stoic. And this is why:

  • I woke up at 4am for a 6am flight to Joburg. I needed to be in Pretoria for a meeting from 9.30-12
  • The plane was delayed by 2 hours.
  • I arrived at the meeting at 10.45
  • One person at the meeting was actively hostile towards me and went against almost every point I brought up
  • Got really bad news about a family member’s health
  • Got caught in the middle a major (unrelated) family fight.
  • Got back to the airport for my flight back to Cape Town. The flight had been overbooked and I had been kicked off it.

I was sitting in the airport waiting area reflecting on all this when a lady sat next to me. We started chatting and I told her that I’d been bumped off the flight.

She asked why I wasn’t complete losing it with the airline. How could I just be sitting there so happy and patient?

Part of the reason was that I didn’t have the energy to fight. I was exhausted. But also, shouting and getting angry would not influence the external environment. It would not put me into a worse headspace. The only thing I had control over was my own mind, and I just aimed to look after that instead.

I grabbed myself a cool drink and waited it out. And at the last minute, got a call up as there was one free seat.

I made it back in time and got to watch the cricket at Newlands with friends.

And despite everything that happened today, I go to sleep happy

Image was taken at 4.30am when I was leaving the house. The image doesn’t quite capture it, but the clouds were suspended and so still that it looked like a painting.